Worm Tea for Diseased Plants

Dear Debbie,

Thanks for asking about worm tea effects - I waited so I could give a true report over time.
I found your website indirectly through google because I was looking for a natural fix for blight on the plants I had in the containers on the deck.

I'm not a farmer, not a gardener -- just went to Wal-Mart and a couple of other places and got some tomato and squash and eggplant plants.

I don't know if you heard out there, but on the east coast there was a huge blight problem because Wal-Mart was selling infected tomato and squash plants, from some grower in the South. Hmmm.

So this is what I think. Worm tea did not cure the blight.What it does do is cause a spurt of growth, leaf growth,which helps to make the plant stronger.
IF (big word) I had applied worm tea more often and more consistently, I might have been able to save the plants. But I was both lazy and not sure if it would help, so I first started out applying a bucket once a week and this slowed down into every other week or every 2 or 3 weeks.

The squash plants died. All of them. Even the pumpkins that I had grown from seed and set off in the yard, far away from the infected squash-from-Wal-Mart plants. So maybe the blight is not necessarily from the squash/tomato plants. Or maybe it travels far in the air.

The tomato plants did not die. But they were sickly and scraggly and produced puny fruits, many of which were covered in black spots. I think this is one of the symptoms of tomato blight.

But I am a happy customer. I do believe worm tea is a very good thing for plants -- it's like a perkup for them, gives them a little push, maybe like a good strong cup of coffee.

So if I was doing it all over again, I would make worm tea every day for them while they were very young and in the danger period of suffering from blight.
Thanks,

E Dempsey